Forest Pro for grass

[glorybound]

As you might know, or maybe not, I use Autograss for my grass. Autograss is pretty much a one click solution for grass, however, I would like to use FP for my grass. Whenever I use FP, I get errors and when I use it on smaller areas, it doesn't look good. I am noticing that my grass, although one click, doesn't have variation in the color. I know in FP, I can control things like color variance. Does anybody have a nice cut grass done in FP that they can share? I want to see exactly how you are doing it.

[glorybound]

My understanding is, FP doesn't want to be the cause of a slowdown, so they limit the density. However, I am not able to get rid of the density error.

[joconnell]

Ah yes - could you screen grab the error? Sometimes it's one of the limits of maximum objects - it tries to protect you from setting anything nuts. There's an object limit in the controls and also a polygon limit - you likely have to up some of those to get your scene to work. On the variation, that's done using the forest map which lets you randomly select from a series of bitmaps and you can also choose to add in some random colours chosen from either a bitmap or a gradient - you then get to choose if the random colour is applied once to each of the individual forest proxies or if it goes further in and applies random colours to the sub objects of the mesh too. Say you have a clump of grass as the model you're scattering, it'd mean you could scatter one hundred of those and have a random colour applied to each full clump of grass or apply a random colour to every blade of grass within each clump model.

At the very end of the display rollout, there's a render section. Max items and max polygons down the very end of that are the two that will stop your forest object from appearing in your render, the other thing that'd make a difference is when you're adjusting the size of your distribution map to choose how tightly packed the grass clumps are, there's also a max density control here - it's in the distribution map rollout, density section so you might need to up this a little bit.

[glorybound]

I think I got it with the MAX density, which I just doubled it.

[dean_dmoo]

Another option is to set density based on distance with a falloff curve. FP will generate less objects further away whilst maintaining the density close up.

[glorybound]

Another option is to set density based on distance with a falloff curve. FP will generate less objects further away whilst maintaining the density close up.

I'll have to play around a tad.

[chriserskine]

use clumps of grass, and not single blades.

if you use mesh and not proxies, you can use edge mode (i think that's it). and it can delete elements which go outside the area. which it good for close up nears paths.

the other key thing is using both density and threshold.

density you can only go so far before you reach max units. but you can drop the threshold number to get even more once you reach that limit.

and don't forget to max out the "max density" as well as max items under render in the display tab.

if you still having trouble getting it dense enough. then start splitting up your grass areas. and use multiple forest objects.

[glorybound]

use clumps of grass, and not single blades. if you use mesh and not proxies, you can use edge mode (i think that's it). and it can delete elements which go outside the area. which it good for close up nears paths. the other key thing is using both density and threshold. density you can only go so far before you reach max units. but you can drop the threshold number to get even more once you reach that limit. and don't forget to max out the "max density" as well as max items under render in the display tab. if you still having trouble getting it dense enough. then start splitting up your grass areas. and use multiple forest objects.

thanks! I have this job working by bumping up the max density.

[chriserskine]

cool, that's always first thing to try.

but its worth experimenting with the threshold when you get a chance. as you can get quite a few more objects shown without going over the limit.

[Itoosoft]

cool, that's always first thing to try.

but its worth experimenting with the threshold when you get a chance. as you can get quite a few more objects shown without going over the limit.

In fact, for grass i always use a "Full" Distribution map, to get the maximum number of items by area. That combined with a bit of "Transform->Random Translation" to avoid the grid effect.
If this is not enough, the limits you need to raise are "Distribution->Max Density" and "Display->Render->Max Items". In Forest 5.0 beta, both parameters accept zero to remove all limits.

You can find technical details about the distribution algorithm and these limits, in this FAQ entry.

I hope that helps.

[Oleg_Budeanu]

Grant Warwick has pretty cool tutorial about using forestpack for trees/grass
You might want to check it out